


in my field of paper flowers

by PanBoleyn



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chronic Hanahaki Instead of Fatal, Depression, Flashbacks, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Margo Kady and 23 appear briefly, Minor Quentin Coldwater/Alice Quinn, Non-Linear Narrative, Quentin Coldwater Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:27:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24633808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: It starts with lilacs, and then the tulips show up.Or, Quentin has chronic Hanahaki Disease, and he doesn't want anyone to know about it.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 24
Kudos: 239





	in my field of paper flowers

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I hope this finds you well! Have a little fic while I work on my bigger projects!
> 
> Warnings for references to canon violent scenes, as well as Quentin's suicidal ideation. If I missed anything, let me know!

“What is this new game, Quentin?” the Monster asks, and Brian had learned to dread that voice somewhere between singsong and monotone, but it is more than dread for Quentin. Because that’s  _ Eliot’s  _ voice turned twisted and wrong, as Quentin coughs on his hands and knees, yellow tulip petals spilling out onto his hands and the grass under him. 

“Not a game,” he says, and his voice isn’t hoarse yet, because Brian wasn’t in love with anyone, Brian didn’t cough up any flowers and so his body has had a respite from that, at least. Only from that, he thinks now, exhausted - because the Monster doesn’t really understand the need for food and sleep, and so he’d kept his human toy going mostly with little zaps of power. 

It worked, but Quentin aches down to his bones, now. And his throat burns as he stares down at the petals bright against the grass, closing his eyes. No lilac now, but there’s no comfort in that when getting over one impossible love doesn’t mean any rest. 

Quentin is holding one of the petals in his hand when he asks the Monster if he can have Eliot back. He’s sucking on cough drops the whole time he’s playing Push for fear that he’ll start coughing, and the only blessing of the bad luck bear is that when he coughs so hard it makes him sick, he’s already in the bathroom and no one sees him flushing away a mess that is much petals as vomit. And then: 

His dad is dead. 

His dad is dead, and all that matters to his mother is the inconvenience. Quentin responds to her complaints, her critical questions, without much energy, and he thinks  _ You loved him once, aren’t you sad at all?  _

He thinks of Arielle, thinks of how even once they fell apart, once she left their home and built her own, he’d still cared so deeply for her. Even in the worst times of it when they barely spoke to each other, when Eliot and then Arielle’s second husband Mattes were forced into the role of peacekeepers, Quentin had still cared about her. 

He doesn’t remember her death so he thinks he died before her - he thinks he died the night of the day Eliot died, actually - but if she had died first, he would have grieved. He stares at his mother and he wonders how she can’t bring herself to even be a little sad about the death of the man with whom she had a child. 

Then again, he’s not sure she’d be sad if he died either. Some of that is the depression talking… but some of it isn’t.

So Quentin says what he needs to so she’ll leave, and the next moment is bent over, coughing yellow petals into the trashcan.

The Monster comes while Quentin is standing there surrounded by his dad’s model planes, sits there and eats frozen peas and calls watching Quentin mourn the weirdest thing he’s ever done. Quentin swallows down tulip petals and tries not to choke on them.

“Your friend Eliot is dead,” the Monster says. 

“I felt his soul die. I promise he didn’t suffer,” the Monster says. 

The Monster blips Quentin back into the penthouse and then leaves him there, it’s late and no one is awake, so Quentin just sits on the couch and stares into space, thinking of broken planes and yellow petals scattered amongst the pieces. He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t move, and when the coughing comes again, he watches the petals fall from his fingers to the floor and he can’t believe they aren’t lined in frost when everything inside him has turned to ice.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


_ It starts with lilacs.  _

_ Or, rather, it starts with lilacs and Niffin Alice’s mocking laughter. “Really? You’re really this pathetic, you’re coughing up flowers for me?”  _

_ Quentin stares at the petals, purple edged with white, spilling from his hands onto the books he has spread out in front of him. He recognizes lilacs from Molly’s ill-fated attempt to bond with him the spring and summer he was seventeen - she doesn’t know the first thing about kids, his stepmother, and he knows that made her wary of trying to bond with him.  _

_ But seventeen isn’t a child, exactly, and he supposes she gave it her best try. And actually Quentin kind of liked the gardening, there was something soothing about knowing the routines of planting and weeding and watering schedules. It couldn’t work out well when he and his mother couldn’t be in the same room for more than ten minutes before things started getting unpleasant, but they all tried, on those weekends from March to August.  _

_ Anyway, the relevant point here is that he knows what lilac petals look like, now. “Who says this is about you?” he asks without looking at Alice, without looking at the twisted shadow of the woman he loves. “My luck, I just caught some weird magical flu or something.” Except aside from a sore throat this past week, and occasional headaches, he hasn’t actually felt sick.  _

_ “Look it up, you idiot,” Alice scoffs, and Quentin closes his eyes and ignores her. It doesn’t matter, it’ll clear up on its own, he’s sure.  _

_ It doesn’t clear up, and after a week of being unable to shake the taste of flower petals from his tongue, Quentin pauses on his Niffin research and looks up magical maladies instead. When he finds what he’s looking for, he laughs until he starts coughing again, spilling lilac petals on the pages that tell him what’s wrong with him.  _

**_Hanahaki Disease occurs only in cases of unrequited love. The sufferer coughs up flower petals - what flower is variable, and appears to have some connection to known flower meanings. The illness will last, in chronic cases, until the feelings are returned or gotten over. There is no cure for the chronic variety of the illness, which can appear before the sufferer is consciously aware of their feelings._ **

**_If the sufferer is coughing up rose petals, however, this is the fatal strain of the disease. In this version, the sufferer will begin to cough up thorns as well, and be slowly torn apart inside as rosevines grow within them. There is a surgery to cure fatal Hanahaki, but the cost is that all emotion regarding the object of one’s affections will be taken away, not just romantic love._ **

_ Quentin brushes the petals off the desk and into a trashcan, running a hand through his hair. Well, at least he’s not coughing up roses. And it’s a good sign, isn’t it, that he didn’t start coughing up the flowers until Alice was a Niffin? Doesn’t that mean that she still loved him back until she became one, that he still has a chance to fix things once he’s fixed her?  _

_ “Or maybe you just didn’t catch it till I was a Niffin.”  _

_ Quentin can’t see her - sometimes he only hears her voice. But she’s always cruel, like this. He tries not to take it too seriously.  _

_ Then the bank. Then a spurt of dark blood and Eliot on the ground, eyes dark and blank and empty, face slack in death - dead from a spell meant for Quentin.  _

_ Just a golem and the real Eliot is fine, someone reminds him - it was almost certainly Margo but he honestly doesn’t remember, doesn’t care when he wakes up screaming from a nightmare that is, it’s -  _

_ Alice dead because of him, Eliot dead because of him. His dreams are full of both of them, staring eyes of blue and hazel accusing him and Alice whispering in his dreams.  _

_ “See what happens to the people you like best? How weak and useless are you that people have to keep dying for you, Quentin?”  _

_ She does that sometimes, turns even soft dreams into nightmares. _

_ He wakes up screaming, wakes up crying, and barely notices that some of the petals that fall from his mouth onto the covers, arms wrapped around himself as the coughing racks his body, are a darker purple than the others, and a very different shape.  _

_ He notices the next morning, when he wakes up surrounded by crumpled petals that he coughed up in his sleep (it was a bad night, clearly, he doesn’t usually wake up to more than a few on his pillow) and he doesn’t know what to make of it.  _

_ Surely they’re just more of the same, right? What would it even mean if they weren’t? _

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin’s a little hazy from what is probably more cough syrup than is strictly advised when he opens the door to find Alice on the other side. It makes it easier, in some ways, to deal with her. It blunts the edges of his hurt, his temper. It doesn’t do a goddamn thing for the drowning grief, which in itself does a lot more to make Quentin just - calm, about Alice being back. 

She’s here to save his life, she says, and maybe if things were different Quentin would appreciate it. Maybe if things were different Quentin would want to know if his death is the only thing Alice has read in his book. He might be uncomfortable with the idea that his entire life is on display for his ex-girlfriend, or he might want to claim the book for himself, to find out if everything is in there.

If fifty years are in there, thus proving that they did in fact happen. 

But things aren’t different, and so Quentin spends his time as he usually does, swallowing down petals and trying to keep calm. If Eliot is already dead, then banishing the Monster in his body is nothing but another burial. He can do that, can’t he? Part of him isn’t sure, but the truth is there isn’t any choice. 

Except… except… he has to wonder, if Eliot is dead, how is he still coughing up flowers for a dead man? He can’t remember now if the death of the person someone with Hanahaki loves cures the disease or not. He should be able to remember, and what if the Monster was lying? But why would the Monster lie, when it could use Eliot as a hostage? It knows how much Quentin wants him back, it would use that if it could, wouldn’t it? 

So Eliot has to be dead. And the Monster is Quentin’s responsibility. All of this is his fault. If Eliot hadn’t tried to save him, the Monster would still be trapped and Eliot would be alive. This is Quentin’s fault for telling them his plan in advance. He should have kept his mouth shut and simply planned to not get back on the Muntjac.

Granted, how that would have played out against everything else, Quentin can’t know. But it’s still what he should have done. This wouldn’t be happening if he’d been smarter, and now -

He can’t think about it. Can’t remember what it was like to dig a grave with his own hands and put Eliot in it, wrapped in their old quilt like - like - 

He can’t think of that being the same, as they go to the park, Alice panicking when he gets sidetracked by the dog in spite of knowing that’s what got him killed last time. Honestly, he appreciates the effort but the truth is that he… he almost doesn’t want to survive this, as long as he takes the Monster with him.

He appreciates the thought after all, Alice coming to save him. He wasn’t sure if he did, but he does. It’s just that he can’t remember anymore why it should matter to him if he lives or dies. 

And then -

And then - 

“Q, it’s me, it’s Eliot.” 

Quentin doesn’t believe it, or doesn’t dare believe - the Monster sounds different, yes, sounds like Eliot, but he doesn’t dare believe. “No games. Let’s just go.”

And the Monster insists, and Quentin wonders, but it’s not until - 

“Fifty years,” Eliot’s body says, stepping closer with his hands spread wide, and the gesture is such an Eliot one, graceful and a little dramatic, and Quentin’s heart is in his throat. “Who gets proof of concept like that?” 

And he’s looking at Quentin with soft intent eyes, a look no one,  _ no one _ has ever directed at him quite like that, except for Eliot. “What?” Quentin asks, believing and afraid to believe, because hope is too much, hope might kill him, but truth -

“Peaches and plums, motherfucker, I’m alive in here,” Eliot’s body - Eliot, it really is Eliot - says, giving Quentin’s shoulder a playful shove, and somehow that just clinches it. 

“Eliot?” Quentin asks and his voice is small, but then Eliot is gone again and Quentin barely thinks, just grabs Eliot’s body and turns them, as the stone blood lands on his back instead. He can’t bring himself to feel bad, can’t prevent a smile even with another dead body on the ground because Eliot’s alive, he’s still there and that means Quentin can save him.

Quentin has to save him, come what may.

Alice doesn’t understand, but then he hadn’t actually expected her to. “I loved you, but you couldn’t trust that,” he tells her, and… He’s not entirely sure he’s talking to her, that particular comment might not exactly apply to him and her, but there is  _ a _ truth in the idea of broken trust between them, on both sides now. 

He brought her back against her will, and though he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to regret something he thought was the right thing, he can understand now why that left her unable to choose him. But what she did with the Keys, that proved to him that if he never fully understood her, she never fully understood him either. 

(Even he and Arielle understood each other better than that, even when they were in the worst stages of things when they half-hated each other, it was rooted in a terrible  _ knowledge  _ of who the other was, and wasn’t.)

“So you’re Team Monster now?” she accuses him, and that just proves it again, doesn’t it? Alice is pragmatic, she sees the Monster as a threat that must be removed and the cost something they just have to accept, and Quentin -

“I’m Team Eliot,” he says, and that’s really all there is to say. 

It’s all there is to say to Julia as well, when she questions him with less judgment and more worry. Julia also seems a little surprised, which even in accusation Alice had not been. Then again, there are things Alice knows that Julia doesn’t, aren’t there?

_ “You think I didn’t notice that when you weren’t looking at me you were looking at him?” _ Alice the Niffin once whispered in his mind. 

“It’s Eliot,” he tells Julia, and he can see it in her eyes, that she still doesn’t get it, but then again he never told her, did he? He never told anyone, and he can’t now. 

He flees the room just in time to cough yellow petals into his hands, again. But he doesn’t mind them this time because now he knows them to be one more proof that Eliot is still alive. 

If they stop, that will be the problem.

<><><>

  
  


_ Quentin learns to hide it. Unlike the -  _ **_horrifying_ ** _ \- fatal version, chronic Hanahaki isn’t as obvious. Sometimes he only coughs a little, enough that he can chew the petals and swallow them back down. He’s not sure if lilacs are edible (also not sure about the other petals, the darker purple ones he tells himself are just weird lilac even if he knows better) but the book he stole from Brakebills’ library on Hanahaki tells him that it doesn’t matter.  _

_ The flowers aren’t exactly the real thing - he got the idea of eating the petals where possible from an account of someone who coughed up oleander blossoms and hid it by eating them instead of spitting them out, and oleanders in nature are really fucking poisonous.  _

_ Sometimes, taking cough medicine actually helps - it soothes the cough for a few hours, and drinking tea that’s like half honey helps his throat be a little less raw. His mouth always tastes of flowers and honey now, which isn’t bad for his breath but isn’t a very good combination on his tastebuds. Still, he doesn’t want anyone to know so what choice has he got? _

_ Julia suspects nothing and cares less, without her shade. Niffin Alice knows, of course, but she thinks it’s funny. Quentin has the hardest time concealing it from Margo during the three months he spends in Fillory after releasing Alice from his tattoo - less hard of a time concealing it from Eliot, who is very caught up in his plans to marry King Idri.  _

_ That thought twists in Quentin’s chest for some reason, and there are more of the not-lilacs in Fillory, but again, he tries not to think about it.  _

_ He is very good at not thinking about it. Through Eliot’s return to Earth and getting Alice back - which goes terribly, she hates him now and he is still coughing up two kinds of flowers - Quentin manages not to think about it. He doesn’t think and doesn’t think until he’s pulling open the Fillory clock door and it isn’t anything but a clock inside.  _

_ He’d run as fast as he could to get here, hoping against hope that he’d make it because he promised. He promised he’d go back to Fillory, that he wouldn’t leave Eliot and Margo alone with the responsibilities anymore. He’d promised and now he can’t keep his promise.  _

_ The coughing comes with the tears, and Quentin hits his knees under the combined force of them, staring at the petals on the ground in front of him. Lilacs and tulips, not just lilacs anymore, he admits to himself wearily, slumping against the useless clock. Purple tulips, he thinks, picking one up. He doesn’t want to know what it means to cough up more than one type of flower.  _

_ He can already guess, and he thinks of gold-hazel eyes and dark curls and wants to cry even more.  _

_ He looks up the meaning of purple tulips - they mean royalty, and he remembers saying “you are High King in your blood,” and then he does cry, until the sobs turn to screams and then to coughs and purple petals at his feet.  _

_ It turns out that chronic Hanahaki with two kinds of flowers means you’re in love with more than one person, and neither of them want you back. _

_ Quentin tries not to think about it, until the moment when he’s standing with Julia, then turning to see Eliot, back and alive and -  _

_ His feet barely touch the ground as he runs across the room and practically throws himself onto Eliot, caught up just as tightly as he holds on. And in that moment Quentin would cough up fucking tulips for the rest of his life if he can have this much. If he can have his friend, that will be enough. _

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin almost gets caught when the Monster chokes him. Of course, because it feels like the first time Julia’s really seen him in a long, long time, so of course it would be.

Quentin sees the Monster rooting in the pill drawer and he doesn’t think, he just dives forward, interfering before he can question it. He doesn’t think when he’s sent flying through the air, the familiar sensation of telekinesis catching him up and flinging him into the wall. He remembers that feeling, light as gossamer silk and strong as steel, holding him safe that time he almost fell, or the more playful touch of it in their bed - 

And it doesn’t matter as he scrambles back to his feet, back into the fray, there are petals on his tongue and he swallows them down with his screams. 

It doesn’t matter when the Monster almost kills him, it doesn’t matter when the Monster gets the last stone, and Quentin sits on the stairs numb and frozen for hours, then takes a shower just so he can scream until he chokes again. Until the shower stall floor is covered in wet yellow petals. 

What does it matter if he gets caught? It’s over, he’s never going to see Eliot again. Except that then Margo shows up with her axes, and suddenly maybe it does matter, maybe they can still save him. He barely notices Margo’s scornful mocking - he’s long since realized she must blame him for Eliot’s possession and it’s not like she’s wrong, is it.

And so of course he’s finally caught at Brakebills South. Which, really, somehow that’s fucking fitting, isn’t it? 

But before he gets caught, he’s thrown back into his body from four years ago, sprawled out on an uncomfortable Brakebills South cot and - oh no - Alice in her underwear on top of him. He scrambles out of there with a pathetic excuse about condoms, and he… Part of him wonders, as he makes his way to Mayakovsky’s office, if he should have just gone with it. Alice - the one in his time - said he wasn’t supposed to do anything that might fuck with the timeline. 

But somehow he doesn’t think having sex with past Alice qualifies. Or even if it does, he can’t do it. Even if he was tempted to, it would be  _ wrong _ , when he’s not really who she thinks he is, when he doesn’t want to anymore. 

He notices, on the way to Mavakovsky’s office, that he feels better, physically, than he does in his actual body in the future. Less shaky, more alert, and his throat isn’t sore. Which is actually worrying - the sore throat isn’t a surprise, but as for the rest of it, is he really taking such bad care of himself these days? It’s a worrying thought but not one he has time for right now. He decides to just enjoy that he can take a deep breath without being afraid he might set off a coughing fit. 

And he also decides to ignore that he hadn’t realized how adjusted he was to feeling lightheaded until he suddenly wasn’t. Again, he doesn’t have time for it now. 

Quentin deals with Mayakovsky and his insults, the lichen vodka and Mayakovsky apparently needing to climb on Quentin to get his discipline. He gets the spell they need and he gets his discipline - Repair of Small Objects. He’s disappointed, because of course it’s something small, something mostly useless, but there is a tiny spark - 

Mending is physical magic. He belonged in the Cottage after all, just like Eliot used to insist whenever Quentin brooded on it too hard, citing his skill at summoning as proof. 

And then there’s Alice. Past Alice, hurt but fierce in what she feels for him and there’s a moment where Quentin is confused - because he remembers her changing her mind really fucking fast about this, they’d barely gotten back when she was saying it wasn’t really them but here she is telling him he’s the best thing to ever happen to her? It, more than anything else, even the foreign itch in the back of his own mind that feels like the fox, proves that maybe Alice was right in the first place. Maybe it never really was them. Except that he has two years of coughing up lilacs to prove his feelings, at least. 

God, what a mess. 

And for Alice to call him the best thing in her life, when he knows where and with who she’s going to find him four years ago and a few months from now, when he knows how she’s going to die and he’s going to drag her back when she doesn’t want it. When he knows, even, that four years from now they’re going to be here again and they won’t even know what to say to each other. 

He didn’t think Alice could still break his heart. He was wrong. 

And then, Alice again. Alice of the present, and Quentin coming back to her lips on his. “It’s me, I’m back,” he says, and carefully does not ask if she initiated the kiss or his past self did. He doesn’t want to know. 

He feels it crash in on him, the exhaustion and the dizziness, the constant ache of his throat. He stands still for a moment, letting his eyes close as he tries to readjust. God, he feels terrible. But there’s no fucking  _ time  _ to fix any of it, is there? He’ll sleep when this is over, or he’ll be dead. At which point sleep will be irrelevant. 

Anyway.

He gives Alice the spell, and then, when he tells her about his discipline, she asks what it is. And there’s a moment, when he’s mending the mug for her, when he describes the feeling as “like I woke it up and reminded it what it was before,” when there’s a soft look in her eyes and he wishes, he  _ wishes  _ \- 

He is so tired of coughing flowers, he is so tired of dreaming of impossible things.

But then - 

He coughs, and it hits too hard to swallow back, yellow petals falling from his lips to the table and the floor, and he just closes his eyes. 

“There’s no lilac anymore,” Alice says, and her voice trembles. 

Quentin looks up at her. “No, there isn’t.” Because that is the truth, isn’t it?

“That explains more than it doesn’t,” Alice says, and she looks worried, suddenly, but before she can say whatever thought put that look on her face, 23 travels in with news that sends everything spiraling again.

The Monster took Julia. 

If it wouldn’t make him cough, Quentin would laugh at what follows. At  _ him  _ having to make flowers bloom. At having to go to the Library and face down Julia-who-isn’t-Julia after months of seeing only the Monster in Eliot’s face and eyes, all of them with canteens and water bottles filled with magic water.

But then he swings one axe and 23 swings the other as Alice distracts the Sister with battle magic. And Julia crumples, screaming...

But over even Julia’s cries there’s a shriek like nails on a dozen chalkboards, and the axe blades fall into jagged pieces on the floor. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


_ The memories come back as Quentin reads the letter he wrote to Margo, and he also remembers why. He ripped it, the letter, his old shaking hands unsteady and he tore it as he tried to fold it. So he’d mended the tear, unable to face rewriting the whole thing, and…  _

_ There is just a hint of magic on the page now, his own magic even in this world that no longer has magic, and Quentin will always suspect that is why his memories came back. Except that doesn’t entirely explain Eliot falling to sit next to him a moment later, also remembering everything.  _

_ Maybe, then, it was the key itself. Maybe all Quentin’s traces of magic did for him was create a belief that only he could have.  _

_ “Who gets proof of concept like that?” he asks. _

_ “What if we gave it a shot?” he asks.  _

_ “Why the fuck not?” he asks, because Eliot’s silence is starting to worry him and he needs - he needs to back off a little bit, needs to not say the word love because he cannot take that back. And if he has misunderstood all of this then… then he needs to have that one loophole. If he doesn’t tell Eliot he loves him, then he won’t lose his best friend.  _

_ (He never told Julia until they were already fighting but she knew, and it was the first crack in their bond. He won’t let that happen with Eliot, he won’t be able to bear it.) _

_ “I love you, but that’s not me and that’s definitely not you, not when we have a choice,” Eliot says, with an expression that’s not quite a mocking smile but is close enough that it hits Quentin like a sucker punch. Because it means -  _

_ It means Eliot thinks the idea of being together for real is a joke, doesn’t it? Does it mean none of it was real, that Eliot was just settling because he didn’t have a choice? That their entire life together, their marriage, everything - _

_ “I - OK,” he says in a tiny voice, and he makes himself sit there another moment. But then there’s an all-too-familiar sensation like something creeping up the back of his throat and so he gets up, leaving the letter on the floor and walking away without looking back.  _

_ “Quentin…” he hears Eliot’s voice, soft, but he can’t. He can’t. Not yet.  _

_ He breaks into a run as soon as he’s out of sight of the doorway and he makes it two corridors before the coughing fit takes him. He goes to his knees with the force of it, coughing so hard it almost makes him sick. He squeezes his watering eyes shut until the fit finally passes, and he’s left kneeling on cold stone, gasping for air.  _

_ Then he opens them, blinking away the tears strain caused, to find yellow petals strewn in front of him. Still tulips, but yellow where they were once royal purple.  _

_ He looks it up later, after the Muntjac and the taunts of his Abyss Key self. Yellow tulips mean a hopeless love.  _

_ Quentin reads that, and he laughs until he cries - and then, of course, he coughs up more petals. _

<><><>

  
  


Quentin tunes out the argument, after Julia is out of the infirmary and the only question left is the one they’ve had for months - what to do about the Monster. 

He’s not the only one staying out of it - Julia is curled up in one of the Cottage armchairs, pale and exhausted, 23 hovering near her. He can hear their voices, Julia’s angry and worn out, 23’s wary and sad, but he can’t make out the words. It’s not his business anyway. He still can’t believe what Penny did, but it’s for them to work out or not. 

“We can’t let Everett get his hands on the Monster’s power!” Kady is yelling. “If that’s the only way to get Eliot back, then I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to accept that he’s gone!” 

“Fuck you!” Margo yells back. “We will figure this out!” 

For some reason, Margo left the shattered pieces of her axes in the kitchen. Quentin guesses this is because the kitchen counter is clean of anything else, so none of them will get lost. Just in case. He sits at the kitchen counter and stares at the broken pieces, and he thinks. 

_ “Repair of Small Objects.” _

_ “Really?”  _

_ “Hope we did not ruin your big plans after you get back to your mysterious future, Mr. Time Traveler.” _

He’d told Alice, he wanted it to be something more impressive. And she’d said… what had she said? That at least he knew now? But there’s something else she said too -  _ “You always did excel at Minor Mendings.”  _

And he did. He always did. Minor mendings and manifesting objects, at least when he did the latter with a gesture like he was pulling a card from his sleeve. He’d figured that out in what he thinks might be the very first timeline, though he can’t be sure, and he’d noticed it off and on since. 

He’d excelled at Minor Mendings, and he remembers - 

_ “Mending is considered basic magic, so long as the objects being mended have no magic on them. If they do, unless it’s a spell you cast yourself, you’re better off not trying to mend it. Mendings go awry when magic is involved, unless you have a mending discipline.” _

Quentin has a mending discipline. He has water left in the bottle at his side. This water is all that’s left of the magic Everett stored, except for what he took back into himself and whatever the others have left in their bottles. Quentin probably shouldn’t use it for something he’s not entirely sure will work, but - 

What choice is there? Because Julia is back and fine and the Sister is contained. The only way to be sure of repeating that - of getting Eliot back and trapping the Monster - is to use the axes again. The axes are broken, and Quentin is a mender. It’s a simple equation. There are first year intro spells with trickier math than this. 

He carefully separates the pieces of blade, that part of him that ‘hears’ broken things telling him which pieces go together until he has all the fragments with the right axe handle. Then he takes a sip of the water, half the mouthful that’s left, and carefully moves his fingers in the tuts for the spell. The axes want to be mended, they want him to bring them back to what they should be. He can do that, he has to do that.

One of the axes mends, but the power of it pushes back and Quentin staggers, falling to his knees. He coughs, over and over, too many petals to swallow littering the floor under him. He can’t breathe, fuck. His throat hurts, his head hurts, his chest and sides and stomach muscles always ache with the force of coughing but it throbs worse than ever now. 

But they need both axes. So he rubs at his watering eyes until his gaze clears, and then he lifts his hands again to cast. This time, the backlash puts him flat on the floor, staring up at the ceiling and coughing, coughing, coughing. 

His head spins. He rolls weakly to his side, curling up on the wooden floor and he can’t catch his breath for coughing. He tries to get up, reaches his knees and then topples over again. The yellow petals are so bright against the dark wood… 

They find him later, curled still and quiet in his black clothes, surrounded by yellow tulip petals and the axes whole again on the counter. Still alive, but too drained to wake.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin wakes up and blinks at a white ceiling. But only for a moment before he has to roll onto his side and cough again, yellow petals falling past his cupped hands and onto the mattress. He doesn’t bother to hide them, he knows his secret must be out. He just closes his eyes and wishes he hadn’t woken up. 

He’s so tired. He’s so tired of being tired, of never being able to stop hurting. He just wants - he wants peace. He wants to be quiet and not have to keep fighting, and he doesn’t know if there’s any way to get that without ending everything. At this point, that seems like an acceptable price to pay. It’s not like before, the bleak grim determination to end things that fueled his attempts. 

He doesn’t exactly want to die. He just wants to rest.

But he can’t. He can’t, because he doesn’t know what happened. He remembers mending the axes but he doesn’t know if it worked. He doesn’t know if they were still able to save Eliot, if they were able to make the incorporate bond happen. He can’t rest until he knows. 

He tries to sit up and falls back to the bed. He’s still so tired. 

Someone is saying his name but there’s something roaring in his ears so he can’t recognize the voice. Quentin should open his eyes again - when did he close them? - to see who it is, but he’s so tired. He’s so tired. And he’s asleep again before he can will himself to open his eyes. 

He wakes up to the white ceiling again, and this time he feels… still achy and generally not great, but less exhausted, like he finally got enough sleep that the weight of tiredness is gone. He tries to sit up and sways, but hands steady him. Big warm hands and he looks up -

“Eliot?” 

“Hey, Q,” Eliot says, and it is technically the same voice, the same eyes, but the warmth there is so far beyond anything the Monster was ever capable of that there’s no moment of fear or uncertainty. Quentin feels tension leave him in a rush and Eliot’s hold on him tightens as he goes half limp with the relief. “You scared us,” Eliot says, and Quentin frowns. 

“I did? You’re the one who was possessed for months.” 

“And you’re the one they found barely breathing on the floor,” Eliot says, an edge to his voice that Quentin can’t quite understand. “I was fine after a few days and some well-applied healing spells.  _ You  _ have been unconscious for a week and a half.” He reaches out, smoothing Quentin’s hair out of his eyes. Without thinking, Quentin leans into the touch. 

“What were you thinking, Q?” Eliot asks softly, still playing with his hair. “Mending those almost killed you from the backlash. If your discipline wasn’t mending - congratulations on getting it, by the way, Quinn told me - you’d be dead right now. That is not a good trade, OK?” 

Quentin tilts his head up to look at Eliot better, making Eliot’s fingers slide through his hair to his neck. He isn’t expecting Eliot to let his hand rest there, curled loosely around Quentin’s nape like he used to in another life (and one night in this one) but… He should pull away, because it’s only an illusion of what he wants. He should pull away before he starts coughing again, except that for some reason the tickle in his throat is staying mild. 

As if the magic that powers the disease is waiting for something. 

“I didn’t know about the backlash till I mended the first axe,” he admits. “And by that point… I had to. They were the only way to save you, and me being OK but losing you for good - that is not any better a trade, El, if we’re making that argument,” Quentin says, meeting Eliot’s eyes. He doesn’t regret it. He did the only thing left to do. 

Eliot’s grip tightens, just a little, and Quentin shivers in spite of himself, biting his lip to keep quiet. “You can’t do that,” he says after a moment in a breathless whisper. “You can’t - you said -” 

Except Eliot had also said  _ “Who gets proof of concept like that?” _ in the park, echoing Quentin’s words in the throne room. Except Eliot isn’t letting go, and he’s looking at Quentin with eyes so soft and warm it’s almost too much. Eliot looks at him and Quentin feels seen, down to the core of him, and he can’t - 

He coughs, ducking his head and covering his mouth, but a few petals fall from his hand to land on the bed. Eliot picks one up between his thumb and forefinger, looking at it like it holds all Quentin’s secrets. 

It does, of course - or at least, the most important one. 

“The centaurs told us about the lilacs, you know,” Eliot says quietly. “You coughed them in your sleep. Apparently this kind of thing starts slow, so you might not have known for a few weeks. I wanted to say something, but Margo thought you’d do better if you got over it on your own. Also, then you didn’t come back for a while. The day you left, before my second wedding that didn’t happen, I found flowers on the floor, mostly lilac but something else too. Didn’t understand it until I started finding them, that first year at the Mosaic.” 

“You knew?” Quentin asks, not sure if he’s shocked, embarrassed, or angry.

“I thought it was Alice. And it was, for a while, wasn’t it?” 

“Yes,” Quentin says, and then because they’re already doing this, he says, “The lilacs were Alice, but the tulips - purple at first, yellow after the Mosaic - those were always for  _ you _ .” And he is angry, not just angry but angry enough. He is tired of loving people who don’t love him, or not the same way, he is tired of being either not enough or too much. “And there’s no lilac left, Eliot, so if you’re going to say -” 

“I’m not going to say whatever you think I might say that has to do with Alice Quinn and her lilacs,” Eliot says, letting the petal fall and curling his hand round the back of Quentin’s neck again. Quentin stills under the touch, barely remembering to breathe. He has never seen Eliot’s eyes this intense. Not in an entire lifetime together. “I’m going to tell you that I fucked up. I was scared that day, in the throne room. I thought - there’s no way you could mean it. Not in the real world, where you could have anyone you wanted -”

“And that doesn’t apply to you? More than it does to me, for sure,” Quentin cuts him off. “We were married, El. We had a - a whole life -” 

“In the middle of Fillorian fairy tale nowhere, Q! And you just - you jumped right back in and I couldn’t, OK? I couldn’t just do that, I don’t have your faith, I’d barely caught my breath from the flood of memory and you were just offering up your whole heart. So I panicked, and I hurt you, and I ran away. I should have said we both needed to take a couple days to process, and then…” 

“I would have still wanted it,” Quentin says. “I still want it, I still love you,” he says, because maybe it will break them but he thinks if it does they already went too far so he might as well get it all out there. “What I don’t know is what you want.”

“This,” Eliot says, like it’s simple and obvious when he has never been either of those things. Not to Quentin, at least. “I want you. I love you too, and I’m so sorry. I had no idea you were still -”

“If you’re telling me this to cure me -”

Eliot shuts up Quentin’s horrified question with a kiss, hand tightening on the back of Quentin’s neck until he shivers and goes pliant for him. “No, of course not. Also, it wouldn’t work,” Eliot murmurs against Quentin’s lips. “I love you, and I want us to try for real, in our real lives. That doesn’t mean I’m not sorry for causing even more hurt than I knew.” 

Oh. Well then. “OK, apology accepted then,” Quentin whispers back. He wants to keep kissing Eliot, but he’s finding that he’s still tired. That’s just not fair, really. He tries to ignore it, but his kisses slow so that Eliot must guess, and he nudges Quentin back to lie down. 

“You can sleep, I’ll be here when you wake up.” 

Quentin looks at Eliot, at the shadows under his eyes, and scoots over on the infirmary bed. “Lay down with me?” he asks, and he sees Eliot almost object, but then decide better of it. He eases himself into the bed, curling around Quentin and pulling him close. Quentin sighs, forehead resting against Eliot’s collarbone, and lets himself drift away again. 

His dreams are full of color, but for once, even yellow doesn’t hurt anymore. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


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